I am a Cat Woman. My self-appointed mission in life is to save the feline world! To accomplish this mission, I get cats fixed. Perhaps my mission might be slightly delusional. This blog is a mishmash of wishful thinking, rants, experiences as I remember them and of course, cat stories and cat photos. I have a nonprofit now, to help keep the cats here cared for and to fix community cats. Happy Cat Club formed in 2015. Currently, we are on a mission to fix 10,000 cats.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Click post title to go to one study about grass seed farming and it's toxic ways. When I saw one chemical used, in this report, it got my attention, because there was something on the Discovery a month ago or more, that described scientists researching this chemical in streams that receive agricultural run off from farm applications. Atrazine!

It's the one that, in lab studies, changed the sex of male bullfrogs into reproducing female bull frogs. They were finding frog abnormalities in ponds and streams next to highly sprayed agricultural fields in CA that were not related to any virus or bacteria. They then tested the water and found high levels of all sorts of farm chemicals, including atrazine. They then took the invasive bullfrogs, not born to these waters, and introduced atrozine to the water they lived in, in the lab. Some of the researchers were very funny about what happened. Male bullfrogs developed female organs, mated with other bullfrogs and even produced young.

I suppose the ultra religious would call this immoral behavior and try to convert the bullfrogs instead of realizing this is science and we are poisoning ourselves.

Anyhow, the controversy over field burning should go further but nobody has the stomach for it. To even bring up ethical land use, makes some conservatives want to shoot people. It should delve into the world of chemicals being dumped on these fields, sliding into our water and into the air we breathe, kicked up in dust clouds and in the now banned field burning. And the consequences. It should include a discussion on how we might start changing from chemical farms to something healthier.

But bringing up change, in agriculture or any other place, is like saying "Yo mother sleeps with your first cousins' half breed dog." You know, fighting words. It's stupid. Everyone wants the world to survive and be productive. Nobody contests that. So why is it so hard to talk about change? Oh, who the hell knows.

The controversy over field burning is hot right now because the legislature just banned it starting next year. The grass seed industry takes up most land in the mid valley. Those farmers are lucky to have land. Not many people do and for gosh sakes, certainly nothing close to hundreds upon hundreds of acres of land.

Some of the land was given to these farmers far distant ancestors in land grants, too. They get tax breaks on the land, because it's zoned for ag, although grass seed cannot be eaten and most of it ends up sold to grow lawns or sports fields, etc.

They're darn lucky, the grass seed folks. They could grow food, or rotate crops and what they do with all that land, i.e. spread and spray on it, affects everybody else's water and air. They should probably count themselves as real real lucky.

My brother once said when pollutants start causing males fertility or any related problems, things will change. Well, maybe change is in the wind, hahahahaha, with the atrapine studies.

It's not like it hasn't been known fooorrrevveer that dioxins, containing a pseudo estrogen, have vast implications in disease for women. I am one of those women. I suffer from endometriosis. People do marches for the cure and wear their pink and ignore many probable causes contained in chemicals in their own homes, and dumped on fields by the metric ton.

Oh, and another thing I read: farmers and gardeners have much higher rates of nervous system diseases like Parkinsons. Big surprise, eh?

I wonder if atripine is used as an insecticide too. It sounds like one of those chemicals. Most insect killers kill by making the nerves just continue to fire relentlessly. It's really ugly. Unless you want to kill bugs. There are usually further results when you put stuff on the ground than just killing a few bugs. We forget we drink the water and eat the things that grow in the soil and need air to breathe. Denial is a really good friend until that friend kills you. What the hell do I care anyhow? I got no kids and no stake in the future. I am FREEEEEEE!